The best of The Spinoff this week: Sunday 8 May edition

“There is a threat of mass resignations across TV and Radio, not just news,” said a senior Mediaworks source. “If there are no actions by the Board in the next 48 hours then resignations at the executive level – and throughout the rest of the company – are expected within days.”

“Our company is gonna be thiiiis big”: Mark Weldon on stage in Auckland on October 30, 2014.

All week this week we focus on books and authors nominated for next Tuesday’s Ockham national book awards. Today: a goddamned epic interview (6000 words!) with fiction finalist Patrick Evans, conducted by Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias.

“Most of the core cast are portrayed as comfortable, middle-class types. We do hear lines like ‘things have been so bad lately,’ but there’s little evidence of it. Nadim is a guitar-toting troubadour who longs for adventure. Sera doesn’t want to leave but feels pressured into it by her brother. These characters just kind of feel like undertaking an impossibly arduous, expensive and dangerous journey to a mysterious country far from home.”

“Bus lanes are often considered cycle lanes, too. Allowing electric vehicles into those lanes could increase the risk for people on bikes. We also know from the recent Grafton Bridge trial (that has now ended) that many drivers simply don’t follow the rules. This would be no different with electric cars.”

“Something being declared objectionable is a pretty big deal. The maximum penalty for dealing with objectionable publications is now 14 years’ imprisonment. That’s the same as the maximum penalty for attempted murder, and more than the maximum penalty for possession of nuclear weapons.”

“All through history, laws have been changed in order to take Māori land. You know, bring in a law that says “this land’s going to be used for a road” or “this land’s going to be used for recreation” and just taken. It’s as though the same thing is still happening with the Public Works Act. And much more Māori land has been taken under the Public Works Act than general land as well.”

“This then, was Weldon’s chief failing: that he didn’t understand either the value of news to TV3, or the importance of relationships within the whole organisation. The channel was always the plucky upstart, its culture the stuff of legend. But as waves of those who had made it so departed, at every level of the business, so that culture eroded even as flash new studios were built and new brands pioneered.”

“This isn’t a Jorgen Leth documentary so I’ll save it and instead dish on the top ten all-time hottest guys in the 2016 Giro lineup. I’ve also included pics of what they probably look like at the very pinnacle of sex.”

“The arrival of the state-of-the-art, $2 million NRL Bunker this year has changed everything. Not by eliminating bad decisions from the game – definitely not that – but by starting a Twitter account people can shout at as if it was an actual ref and they were at the actual game.”

“A self-described ‘lurker of Reddit’, Guy Williams instead considers himself to be of their ilk with the r/NewZealand community. Being a white, successful millennial man – a subject his current show plays on – he is both exactly the type of person who hangs out on Reddit and exactly the type of person that people on Reddit would hate.”

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